It’s only rock ’n’ roll but we’ll like it

HBO’s ‘Vinyl’ has that vintage ’70s haze

SCORSESE

Bobby Cannavale, left, and director Martin Scorsese at the New York premiere of "Vinyl."

CAST

BRINSON+BANKS,NYT

Terence Winter, clockwise from bottom left, the showrunner of HBO's "Vinyl," with Ray Romano, Olivia Wilde and Bobby Canavale. The new series debuts Feb. 14 on HBO.

JAGGER

Dimitrios Kambouris,Getty Images

"Vinyl" stars Bobby Cannavale and Olivia Wilde. Mick Jagger, right, is an executive producer on the show, which features nostalgia for 1970s New York, grimy reality and a pounding rock 'n' roll soundtrack.

When we meet Richie Finestra, the protagonist of the new HBO drama "Vinyl," his situation is dire. It's 1973, and this beleaguered record-label executive, played by Bobby Cannavale, has lost faith in the music industry, squandered his sobriety and gotten himself in serious trouble.

Yet when he seems to have hit bottom, Richie glimpses new inspiration not far from the shabby downtown Manhattan intersection where he has gone to buy cocaine: a raucous rock concert at the Mercer Arts Center, being played by an up-and-coming band called New York Dolls.

It is no accident that, from its opening minutes, "Vinyl," with its mixture of grimy reality, nostalgia for 1970s New York and a throbbing rock 'n' roll soundtrack, feels like a Martin Scorsese movie. Scorsese, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker, is an executive producer of the series and directed its two-hour pilot episode.

Should that pedigree feel insufficient for a narrative about bad behaviour, existential crises and the redemptive power of music, Scorsese is joined on "Vinyl" by Mick Jagger, the lead singer of the Rolling Stones and a fellow executive producer on the series, which has its debut Feb. 14.

With a cast that includes Olivia Wilde, Ray Romano and Juno Temple, and an esthetic that mixes fictional characters with actors playing real-life music stars (like David Bowie, Elvis Presley and Lou Reed), the series is ambitious, expensive and — to its creative team — the closest proposition to a sure thing this side of a Led Zeppelin reunion.

As its showrunner, Terence Winter, said, when he was invited to participate on the project: "I remember pitching it to myself and going, 'All right: Martin Scorsese. Mick Jagger. Rock 'n' roll. I don't care what it is — there's no way I wouldn't watch this.'"

For HBO, which is now the network of "Game of Thrones," "Sesame Street," Jon Stewart and Bill Simmons, "Vinyl" is an important addition to its lineup: a way to keep people like Scorsese and Jagger in its talent stable, and to guard against encroachments from cable competitors like Showtime and streaming services like Netflix, which are preparing 1970s period series of their own.

To succeed, "Vinyl" will have to fulfil the promise of its sexy subject matter and its superstar producers. And it will have to find a coherent, compelling narrative in a heartfelt if abstract idea about how music defined people's lives in that era.

As Scorsese explained earlier this month at the Television Critics Association press tour, to have grown up with rock 'n' roll means "you see life around you played to that music."

The goal for "Vinyl," he said, is "that music becomes part of the narrative, but the whole narrative is like a piece of music."

For Scorsese, music has been a persistent element in his fictional features, as well as his rock documentaries like "The Last Waltz" (about the Band) and "Shine a Light" (about the Rolling Stones).

By focusing on the 1970s in "Vinyl," Jagger explained in an interview, the series could depict a thrilling, uncertain time in music, when a declining metropolis provided a crucible for punk, disco and hip-hop.

"New York was broke," he said. "You've got a lot of poverty, a lot of rich people and a lot of disparity — all these scenes going on against a background of quite tough and grimy cityscapes."

Also, Jagger added: "I forgot about the silly clothes. Some of them were ridiculous, and some were kind of sharp."

It took years to reach this point with "Vinyl," which was planned as a movie, called "The Long Play," that Scorsese and Jagger had been developing since at least 2000, and which would have followed characters in the music business over several decades and cultural eras.

Winter, an Emmy Award-winning producer of "The Sopranos" and showrunner of "Boardwalk Empire," was among the screenwriters who worked on "The Long Play." But in 2008, he said, "The world economy dropped out, and suddenly the phone stopped ringing."

"The studio was like, 'Eh, this is maybe not the time to do a three-hour epic period piece,'" said Winter, who also wrote "The Wolf of Wall Street" for Scorsese.

Taking a page from "Boardwalk Empire," HBO's costly Prohibition-era gangster drama (which ran five seasons and drew about 2 million to 3 million viewers an episode), Winter reshaped the rock project as a cable-TV pilot.

For their male lead, Richie Finestra, the angst-ridden head of American Century Records, the producers honed in on Cannavale, who won an Emmy playing short-fused mobster Gyp Rosetti on "Boardwalk Empire."

Cannavale's preparations for "Vinyl" were extensive and intimate, including meetings with the talent manager Danny Goldberg (who has represented artists including the Beastie Boys and Nirvana); guitar lessons with Lenny Kaye, a founding member of the Patti Smith Group; and lots of time spent with Scorsese, who helped shape the Richie character.

"He said to me, 'You're a big guy, and you put your hands all over people,'" Cannavale recalled. "Every time I would go near him, I could feel him pull back a little bit. He said: 'I want you to keep that. I want Richie to be like that.'"

Wilde, a veteran of TV shows like "House" and "The O.C.," also sought input into her character, Devon, who is Richie's wife and a one-time denizen of New York's decadent art scene.

In conversations with the "Vinyl" producers, Wilde said: "I am already a fan. But in order to sign up for it, I need to know that you're not asking me to be the long-suffering housewife. I want to make sure there's something there."

Wilde said she was satisfied not only by the backstory for Devon, a former muse and confidant to Andy Warhol, but also by the producers' attitudes of openness and collaboration.

Other co-stars just seemed happy for the opportunity to see themselves reimagined in wide lapels and luxuriant facial hair.

Romano, the comic star of "Everybody Loves Raymond," who plays Richie's record-label partner Zak Yankovich, said that when he submitted his audition tape to Scorsese, the response he got back was, "He's never heard of you."

"I'm not that pompous to think everybody has to have heard of me," Romano said with a chuckle. "It just seemed a little odd."

Still, said Romano (who has since appeared on shows like "Parenthood" and "Men of a Certain Age"): "It ended up being a blessing. He didn't have any preconceived notions of me."

Despite a drumbeat of competition, including coming shows like Netflix's "The Get Down" (whose creators include Baz Luhrmann, and which is also set in 1970s New York) and Showtime's "I'm Dying Up Here" (set in the Los Angeles comedy scene of that era), Winter was unconcerned.

"I'm not going to pay attention to any of those other projects," Winter said.

For Jagger, the ongoing production of "Vinyl" has been his introduction to one of very few showbiz experiences he has never had before, and a continual lesson in how much to be involved in the process.

"You're not going to spend every minute of your life on this — that's not your job," he said. "But it's your baby, and you don't want to give it away. Without getting to be obsessive, you have to keep your hand on the tiller."

(One further reason for Jagger to keep an eye on "Vinyl": His son James is an actor on the show, playing the frontman of an unseasoned protopunk band. "I didn't say I insist" on his casting, Jagger explained. "I just said, 'Let him audition and see how he does.'")

Winter said that "Vinyl" had been another chapter in Scorsese's cultural education, too, in learning how to apply a rock fan's ear to a visual medium and bring his cinematic skills to television.

Reflecting on an early conversation about "Boardwalk Empire," Winter recalled explaining to Scorsese the difference between a miniseries and an ongoing series.

"I said, 'A miniseries is a finite amount — six, eight, 10 episodes, and that's it,'" Winter said. "'A series is, you do the pilot, and then it continues.'"

Slipping into an affectionate imitation of Scorsese's rapid-fire delivery, Winter continued: "He goes, 'So the pilot is the movie, and what happens in the series is after the movie? I get it. I'll do the movie, and then you do the series.'"